Finishing out a year in which a lot has happened, but there’s been almost nothing happening on this site — mostly because a lot has happened. But I’m using this place as digital storage by including some writing for unusual places from the last few months. First up, this is a piece written for the launch party of Oni’s The Long Con at Portland’s very own Books with Pictures, which ended up being read aloud by the wonderful Ben Coleman.
Based on the questions I’ve been asked over the years, there are a few preconceptions about being a journalist at Comic-Con that I feel the need to try to clear up. Firstly, no; it doesn’t mean that you automatically get into all the popular panels and hang out with movie stars and eat free food, although I did once accidentally leave Hall H in San Diego through the wrong door and ended up in the celebrity waiting room, which had a spread like you wouldn’t believe, and was filled with the cast of some big blockbuster I can’t even remember, all staring at me while clearly thinking “You don’t belong here.” I was quickly escorted out by security.
And, no, being press doesn’t mean that you automatically know where all the good parties are, and it definitely doesn’t mean that you get invites and can sneak everyone in. I mean, yes, there was that time I got into a party where the band was Josie and the Pussycats from Riverdale and they were actually performing live, and everyone lost their minds, but that happens, like, once or twice a convention, tops.
Most of all, despite what I’ve just said, it isn’t glamorous. It’s glamor-adjacent, and that’s fun and strange and great, sure, but it’s also weird and uncomfortable and occasionally just very… awkward. Here’s the best example of what I’m talking about. It’s about eight or nine years ago, and through some unlikely happenstance, I’m working for a well-known weekly news magazine that I won’t mention the name of. I mean, technically, I’m working for the website of a well-known weekly news magazine, but the distinction is meaningless to anyone I tell about the job. Honestly, it was pretty meaningless for me, too; I was firmly under the impression that I had arrived in the big leagues, and that everything was going to be great from then on.
This was before I arrived in San Diego to discover that I would be sharing a room with five strangers for the next four nights. And that the room had two single beds, and we could maybe get an extra cot if we were lucky. On the one hand, everyone seemed very nice and there was only a couple of people whose work I recognized and felt embarrassed to be sharing a bed with because, really, they deserved better. On the other, I can’t emphasize this enough: We were all working for a well-known weekly news magazine — like, one of the ones that’s actually a name — and they definitely could’ve afforded at least another room or two. This was just cheap.
It also made it difficult to do work. It isn’t unusual to end up working late into the night to meet deadlines at Con, and when you’re sharing a room with five people trying to sleep, it’s not so easy to stay up, typing away, without making people mad at you. All of which explains why I ended up sitting in the foyer of the hotel, trying to write a couple of stories at ten o’clock at night one night.
So, I’m sitting there with my laptop and headphones on, listening and listening and listening to this interview, trying to transcribe it and write whatever I was writing, and I kind of half-noticed that it was getting pretty busy. I didn’t really think that much about it, because it’s Comic-Con and everywhere is busy at Comic-Con, especially hotels. And it keeps getting busier, and busier, and at one point I look up and realize, wait, everyone looks really fancy. This is odd.
It took me about another hour or so, and by this point it’s maybe 2am and there’s really loud music and the foyer is just packed, to realize that there was actually a party going on all around me and I hadn’t realized. And it’s a big party; there’s a DJ, there’s people dancing and drinking and making out and all kinds all around me and I somehow just hadn’t noticed for hours. I didn’t know what to do, because I couldn’t go back to the room, everyone was asleep and I hadn’t finished work, so I just…stayed there. And pretended none of it was going on while I sat on a couch, with various things happening literally right beside me that were very distracting. Eyes fixed on the screen. Writing. Just writing.
And then, at one point, with no warning, the music just stopped suddenly. The crowd groaned en masse, but stopped when it became clear what was going on: Everyone shuffled aside to let an ambulance crew pull a stretcher towards the elevators, and then they disappeared. No-one said a word, everyone just staring at the elevators for minutes until the ambulance crew re-appeared, with someone strapped into the stretcher.
This sounds like a downer, I know, and you could tell at the time that the ambulance crew was clearly thinking the same thing. They didn’t look anyone in the eye as they moved towards the door of the hotel, and then they paused, before one of them said in this wonderfully embarrassed voice, “He’s going to be fine!” As in on cue, the music immediately started back up, and everyone got back to partying, like the whole thing had been planned.
That is what Comic-Con is like as a journalist. Being exhausted, under deadline, surrounded by people having more fun than you, probably, and unsure whether or not you just saw something actually tragic, or if it was some weird performance art piece in the middle of a party. And, you know, also getting to see Josie and the Pussycats perform live on a hotel rooftop standing next to the cast of Arrow as they lose they minds.
What can I say? It’s really large. It contains a lot of multitudes.
